


To Be Touched.

by Cuthwyn



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cuddling & Snuggling, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Poetic, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, but very slightly, it's trippy, metaphors galore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 18:27:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12138462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cuthwyn/pseuds/Cuthwyn
Summary: Jason has had a bad night.The kind of night that involves nightmares and Roy holding him with a bleeding nose.A few hours later, Jason wakes up in Roy's arms and ponders over a very alien concept ... being touched.Somehow, he learnt the secret language.





	To Be Touched.

**Author's Note:**

> A story that was too long to be a drabble that has been bugging me.

Warmth.  
It was always the first sensation Jason noted upon waking.  
Being warm.  
Not the suffocating warmth that came from sleeping in his bed at the Manor, just a gentle current that flowed over aching muscles like water. 

Sighing softly, Jason smiled into his pillow and shuffled back in search of more of the warmth that enveloped him, feeling the solid heat against his back. The weight around his middle shifted in response and pulled him closer. Peeping open an eye, Jason watched a hand spread across his stomach, not possessively, but as if the owner was trying to grant his wish of spreading the warmth.  
‘Hmph Jaybird.’  
The words brushed against the back of his neck like a prayer, soft, gentle, barely present in reality.  
Not too long ago, Jason would have jolted wide awake, hyper alert and ready to kill his kidnapper but that didn't happen very often anymore. Just this gentle, grounding warmth that his mind seemed to recognise meant only one thing in Jason's world.  
‘Harper.’  
He answered his partners call with a soft groan and turned further into the strong arms holding him, snuggling deeper into the warmth and tucking his head beneath Roy's chin. Breathing in deeply, Jason let the smell that he could only describe as Roy filter through his very core, spreading the warmth inside. It wasn't a singular scent, but a soothing perfume. He could name the parts, the tangy undertone of shower gel, a slight hint of the sweet musk of sweat, machine oil and cigarette smoke. Alone they meant nothing but together, the scent meant only Roy. It seemed to be able to quiet the noise in his head, soothe the steady throb of his ever present headache.

The hand that had been on his stomach, now rubbed lazy circles into the small of his back, loosening his muscles as if he were a screw wound up too tight and Roy was tinkering with it, easing the tension that bit into metal. Smiling against the soft skin, Jason slid his arms around a firm torso and snuck his leg in between two muscular ones, that latched onto it as if it was meant to be there.  
Out loud, Jason scoffs at the mere idea of cuddling. The concept too intimate, too vulnerable, too everything he never could quite understand.  
How to be close to someone.  
Despite having to continuously, consciously think about personal space to prevent encroaching on another's, Jason had always felt uncomfortable holding on to another person’s flesh.  
It didn't mean that Jason didn't want to be held.  
It hurt more than any wound that hands could inflict, to not be touched.  
Jason didn't know how much he would miss being touched, the agony of it, until it happened.

As a child, despite popular opinion, Jason was touched. His mamá smelt like burnt toast and cigarettes when she caught hold of wiggling limbs and held him tightly against her breast, placing soft kisses on top of his head. His Da sat him on his lap and let him lean against his firm chest, he always smelt like sweat and stale alcohol. It wasn't to last though, and the comforting touch of his parents was snatched away, leaving him cold and alone. After his mamà’s death, the only touch he experienced was the sort that only came when he was paid for it. That touch wasn't warm.  
It was cold and sour. Fingers feeling like jellied eels sliding along his skin.  
By the time Bruce found him, Jason forgot that being touched wasn't meant to feel like that. He forgot about the warmth of just being held by another human being. Just being close and nothing more.  
He'd fought it back then. He'd fought tooth and nail to free himself from the grasping hands and arms. Not quite trusting the new, but familiar, sensations it brought him.  
He didn't have to wait long to be free of the confusing and unwanted hugs.  
In death, he was alone.  
Resurrected, he became a leper.  
No one wanted to touch the crazy guy. 

Arkham was the next time he remembered touch. Touch that didn't feel like jellied eels or leave his skin prickly and wrong. Touch that felt warm, but clinical. Boundaries. An tall invisible wall and Jason couldn't always find it. Couldn't trust it.  
Touch that could become strong, firm and restricting. Boundary, a very visible wall that proved reality. Jason found himself pressing against it in protest. Roaring in agony at just being in the present, being alive, just being.  
Touch that came with a gentle, soft press of a hand in his, on his shoulder. Boundaries, but softer and fuzzy at the edges. Those always came after the touch that had restricted and pulled him back from the ferocious precipice over the terror filled darkness that reached out with its ice cold tendrils. It was that touch, that hand, that grounding warmth Jason remembered clearly, like the lamp of a lighthouse on a foggy night. The strong, firm, restricting touch, straining against arms, gripping fingers he understood. Jason knew how to ask for that, he hated it, it was frightening, but it always lead to the gentle touches. The hand in his, on his shoulder. That had been the problem, in Arkham, Jason didn't know how to ask for just that hand.

It was a secret. A language everyone knew except him. The words that asked for the touch a little boy remembered, sat in his land of stories and stars. The whispers constantly buzzing just out of earshot and he saw the eyes, the smirks on the faces of those who claimed to love him, to care. Jason trusted that just as much as he trusted the boundary at Arkham. It was invisible to him and moved. Not something that struck him as a concept to trusted and clutched to his chest like the treasure it posed itself to be.  
Somehow, one day, Jason must have learnt the secret language, because Roy Harper happened. He was pretty sure he never spoke words out loud, he didn't know them, he made no gestures or signal because he didn't understand how, but somehow, Roy understood.

To be understood.  
The most basic, terrifyingly vulnerable need that was as essential as air.  
And Jason had been suffocating.  
Roy held his hand.  
Touch, warm and grounding.  
Jason had been sat on his ferocious precipice, pleading with the terrifying darkness to let him go. He didn't want to fight anymore, he was tired. So very, achingly tired.  
Roy held his hand.  
‘Jaybird.’  
‘Harper.’  
Roy took his hand.  
He took his hand and like a shepherd, guided the lost boy to lie down and covered him with a blanket of whispered stories and stars. The touch only ever came when Jason asked for it, body and soul, somehow, without ever speaking a word.

Sometimes, like tonight, Jason fell from his precipice into the terrifying darkness. A little boy, screaming, alone in a warehouse, swirls of fire that licked at him, the sky in ground weighing down until it was too heavy to breathe.  
The blanket came back but this time it was silent. Whispered stories and stars saved for a little boy who could hear them. This blanket rocked, firm and restricting, but the boundary had gone for Roy had welded Jason to him like he did to a broken part with a blow torch.  
This blanket rocked in silence, pressing his limbs to his sides so the blood that dropped from the nose pressed against Jason's cheek was the only blood that got spilt. The little boy screamed and roared until Jason came back.  
And Roy waited, always. Because his Jaybird always came back.  
His Jaybird came back with a hiccup and a sniffle.  
His Jaybird came back with a small whimper and a body pressing into him as if trying to bury his way inside.  
His Jaybird came back with a whisper.  
‘I can still kick your ass.’  
‘I know.’ Roy replied with a smile.  
The blanket of stories and stars returned and Jason closed his eyes with a sigh.

Warmth.  
It was always the first sensation Jason noted upon waking.  
Being warm.  
Not the suffocating warmth that came from sleeping in his bed at the Manor, just a gentle current that flowed over aching muscles like water.


End file.
